Fresh Dirt from the Grave
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
Shipwrecks, dive bars, possession, and science – this is where contemporary horrors and ancient terrors meet.
In Fresh Dirt from the Grave , a hillside is “an emerald saddle teeming with evil and beauty.” It is this collision of harshness and tenderness that animates Giovanna Rivero’s short stories, where no degree of darkness (buried bodies, lost children, wild paroxysms of violence) can take away from the gentleness she shows all violated creatures. A mad aunt haunts her family, two Bolivian children are left on the outskirts of a Metis reservation outside Winnipeg, a widow teaches origami in a women’s prison and murders, housefires, and poisonings abound, but so does the persistent bravery of people trying to forge ahead in the face of the world. They are offered cruelty, often, indifference at best, and yet they keep going. Rivero has reworked the boundaries of the gothic to engage with pre-Columbian ritual, folk tales, sci-fi and eroticism, and found in the wound their humanity and the possibility of hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The assured if meandering collection from Bolivian author Rivero, her English-language debut, examines the relationships between predator and prey in North and South America. "Blessed Are the Meek" draws on a real-life occurrence in early 2000s Bolivia, when scores of Mennonite girls and women were raped. In Rivero's telling, 15-year-old victim Elise is consistently denied a voice by her religious leaders. Meanwhile, Elise's father plans revenge. In "Fish, Turtle, Vulture," the lone survivor of a shipwreck visits the mother of a dead shipmate, who plies him with fresh tortillas, wonders how he lived for over a year with no supplies, and begs him to honestly recount the final days of her son's life. "Kindred Deer," the highlight, follows a married Bolivian couple living and studying in the U.S. Joaquín, the husband, makes money by being a subject for medical tests, but when a strange blotch grows on his back, he and his wife worry for his well-being. Though some stories run a bit too long, Rivero confidently and credibly gives voice to characters in harrowing situations. Fans of Latin American literature will be glad to encounter this worthy writer.
